Even 20 years later, people still ask me where I was on Sept. 11, 2001.
After serving as director for Japan-U.S. security treaty affairs in Tokyo, I had been stationed at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing since October 2000 as an Arabic language officer. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in my Beijing apartment with my wife watching CNN’s live coverage of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
I was shocked, but hardly taken by surprise.
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